At 2:09 pm -0400 2/10/96, der Mouse wrote:
>>>> Of course, if we were to head THIS direction, we should first make
>>>> it possible for the system to dynamically add a new device when it
>>>> gets connected,
>>> Wot ? Like StunOS has been doing for at least 6 years ?
>
>I've been using SunOS for at least six years and I've never seen
>anything of the sort.  In my experience, all the devices you want to
>use have to be configured at kernel build time - if you didn't
>explicitly configure a disk at target 4, that kernel will not accept a
>disk at target 4.  Nothing like "sd* at scsibus? target ? lun ?".
>
>The closest I've seen is that SunOS finds all configured devices at
>boot time, regardless of whether they're actually present.  If one
>isn't, and you then connect it and try to access it, it'll work.  But
>this is not at all the same thing as taking one and the same kernel and
>hooking up a disk at target 4, then next boot having a cdrom there, or
>a tape drive, and having it work.  (Or even picking it up at run time,
>with SCIOCREPROBE.)

Well, SunOS 5 (that which is distributed in Solaris) will auto-configure
new devices at reboot (if there is a file in the root called /reconfigure,
maybe, I can't remember)...

That's not strictly dynamic, though.  At least you don't have to rebuild
kernels (this feature was quite possibly implemented so Sun could justify
not distribute kernel-compiling kits).

Jules


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